The advent of global communications networks such as the Internet has served as a catalyst for the convergence of computing power and services in portable computing devices. For example, in the recent past, portable devices such as cellular telephones and personal data assistants (PDAs) have employed separate functionality for voice communications and personal information storage, respectively. Today, these functionalities can be found in a single portable device, for example, a cell phone that employs multimodal functionality via increased computing power in hardware and software. Such devices are more commonly referred to as “smartphones.”
Oftentimes, these smartphones are further equipped with built-in digital image capture devices (e.g., cameras) for taking photos or short video clips, and microphones for receiving voice input, together with the computing functionalities of the PDA. The hardware and software features available in these smartphones and similar technologically capable devices provide developers the capability and flexibility to build applications through a versatile platform. Similarly, the built-in digital image capture devices are capable of generating video graphics array (VGA) quality pictures having 640×480 pixel resolution or higher. Many smartphones are capable of taking pictures on the order of one mega-pixel resolution and higher.
With the technological advances in handheld and portable devices, there is an ongoing and increasing need to maximize the benefit of these continually emerging technologies. Given the advances in storage and computing power of such portable wireless computing devices, they now are capable of handling many types of disparate data types such as images, video clips, audio data, and electronic organizers for managing and organizing a variety of PIM (personal information manager) data, for example. However, there does not exist a mechanism whereby such disparate data types can be utilized together.